In “Dreaming of the Middle Ages,” Umberto Eco asks the question: “What would Ruskin, Morris, and the pre-Raphaelites have said if they had been told that the rediscovery of the Middle Ages would be the work of the twentieth-century mass media?”

Indeed, the twentieth-century mass media has disseminated what Eco calls, “escapism à la Tolkien” which has influenced many modern writers and cultural producers in other mass media such as films and video games. Although such “escapism à la Tolkien,” or “Tolkienesque” fantasy, seems harmless as pure entertainment, its consumption is massive, and many picture the Middle Ages not as it actually was, but how it is depicted through medievalist fantasy.

BAKEA 2019 6th INTERNATIONAL WESTERN CULTURAL AND LITERARY STUDIES SYMPOSIUM

deadline for submissions:

Monday, September 30, 2019

Cultural, geographical, political, social, emotional, linguistic, and economic borders, among others, define and determine different aspects of our identities, cultures, and social lives along with literatures and arts. In a world charmed by 'globalization', interdisciplinary studies in humanities and social sciences has thrown further lights on the definitions, conceptualizations, roles and functions of borders. They are understood not only in terms of limits, restrictions, and divisions but also in terms of opportunities, possibilities, and reconstructions.

Committee for Comics Studies (AG Comicforschung) and the Committee for the Studies of Fandom and Participatory Culture (AG Partizipations- und Fanforschung) at the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) / Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception St

Our 2020 NeMLA panel emerges from Gayatri Spivak’s seminal question, “can the subaltern speak?” Following Spivak’s response to this question, we will investigate moments when subalterns cannot speak or have difficulty speaking. Our inquiry into these moments will build on and sharpen conversations about otherness with respect to literary texts and beyond.

“Transsexualité, transidentité: un tabou français?” (“Transsexuality, transidentity: a French taboo?”[1]). Such was the title chosen by the online French news magazine France Infoto illustrate an article published in 2015[2]that discussed the lack of visibility transsexuals and transgender people still suffer from in French society.

“Transsexualité, transidentité: un tabou français?” (“Transsexuality, transidentity: a French taboo?”[1]): such was the title chosen by the online French news magazine France Infofor an article published in 2015[2]that discussed the lack of visibility trans(gender/sexual) people still experience in French society. Indeed, there has been an increasing visibility of trans individuals in film and TV in recent years.

According to Walter Benjamin, “the art of storytelling is coming to an end”; we are losing “the ability to share experiences.” Without storytelling, which was once “a capability that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions,” we are fragmented into a piece of “information” and isolate ourselves in what is believed to be subjectivity (“The Storyteller”). And yet, in exceptional situations, storytelling appears still possible. For example, when the northeast Japan was struck by the earthquake and tsunami disaster, after initial muteness and banal narrativization by the major media (which was indeed a disaster for storytelling), there emerged stories among the survivors.

It’s a commonplace to say that realism is having a moment again, or that realism has never left. This seminar recognizes both that realism is always important and that realist critical projects have proliferated in the past decade. The majority of these renew our interest in literary realism as an aesthetic tradition. Where realism was previously defined in contrast to modernism, naturalism, or more speculative genres, what distinguishes this recent revival in realism seems to be its increased interdependence with these other aesthetic categories and modes. Fredric Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism, for instance, takes realism not as a static epistemological or narrative structure, but as an increasingly affective mode of estrangement.

The American Religion and Literature Society seeks proposals for presentations on literary expressions of feminist theologies broadly construed. We welcome presentations on any period, genre, or form of American literature, and those regarding any religious orientation. We particularly encourage papers on works of literature

- that examine the power, enfranchisement, religious ideas, and practices of women

- that consider how religion subverts or reinforces androcentrism and patriarchy

Hellenic Association for American Studies (HELAAS) and the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece

deadline for submissions:

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Ex-Centric Narratives:

Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media

The Hellenic Association for American Studies (HELAAS) in cooperation with the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece, is launching the fourth issue of the electronic multi/interdisciplinary open access, refereed journal with the title Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media (Ex-Na). The journal addresses academics, scholars and graduate students engaging in the interdisciplinary study of Anglophone literatures, cultures and media and will be published once a year.

İstanbul Bilgi University is launching a series of annual events dedicated to the intersecting themes of gender equality and sustainability under various academic disciplines. This year’s event will consider the framework of film studies. The inspiration for this inaugural symposium comes from the tireless gleaner of images Agnès Varda, whose legacy of female subjectivity spans more than six decades, from her first film La Pointe Courte (1955) to her final documentary Varda par Agnès (2019). An opening event launching the series will be followed by a one-day symposium to mark the anniversary of Varda’s passing, taking place at İstanbul Bilgi University, March 27-28, 2020.

In the trajectory of neoliberalism and an increasingly global marketplace, the necessity of undercutting the Western subsumption of the world is urgent. As Jean-Luc Nancy has argued, however, such a saturation of Western meaning, though potentially catastrophic, is not a forgone conclusion. On the contrary, it is precisely at the limit of the Western notions of telos and subjective agency that a new conception of the world can be collectively understood and created. It is also against such a limit that feminist discourses challenge the universal subject in the name of sexual difference and theories of intersectionality.

A recent trend has seen many writers create literary narratives that confront twentieth-century events while inscribing into that past the authors’ contemporary selves (e.g.: Binet 2009; Jablonka 2012; Foenkinos 2014). These biographical meta-narratives seem dictated by the impossibility to construct one’s own subjectivity without facing the very notions of civilization and humanity that our violent pasts have reconfigured.

Translation Reviewis a peer-reviewed journal committed to publishing the best new scholarship on all aspects of literary translation studies. Each issue highlights a translator in an interview and features articles and essays on the history, practice, and theory of translation, as well as translations of contemporary international writers into English.

This seminar asks when we let ourselves engage in utopian thinking, what do we want the university to be? We recognize that the university needs to change, but what should we change it into? How should teaching and learning happen? Who should make decisions and how? What should these institutions identify as their mandate, and how should they exist within their community? What might radical approaches rooted in ecologically responsible practices or decolonization look like?

From the restorative wines of Marko Kraljevic to the apple wedges festering in Gregor Samsa's back and the grand feasts peppering the novels of Gogol and Dostoevsky, images of food and drink in the Russian and Eastern European literary imagination are tantalizingly abundant. Collectively, they appear in novels, films, folktales and works of art as consumed objects and metonymic representations of the landscapes and human practices that cultivate and prepare them. However, these images also form a constellation of symbols and metaphors through which we can trace the particularities of identity and social belonging, historical experience, and the engagement of the individual with the local and global environment.

The role of education in shaping and impacting the world has never been contested and will certainly be held as an unwavering belief as long as there is life on earth. However, human capacity to provide the appropriate education that would meet the needs of every generation has always been doubtful. Countries across the globe have invested large amounts of money on reforms that were intended to improve education, yet the results have often been unsatisfactory.